Business as Mission Site

Embracing the Call to Business

An Interview with Joseph Vijayam

Joseph Vijayam has had many years to think about how to integrate his Christian faith with his business life. He started Olive Technology in 1996 with a vision to support himself to do ministry, much like the Apostle Paul did when he made tents. Since then, Joseph’s understanding of ‘mission’ has developed to embrace ‘business as mission’. He describes this process as a journey, a voyage of discovering what it means to glorify God through his business life. I got the chance to talk to Joseph as he shared some of his reflections on being Kingdom-minded in business and the role of Christian business people in bringing transformation to India.

Franchising and Business as Mission

Perspectives from an Expert Panel

"Franchising thrives by tapping into local knowledge and connections, combining them with the franchise operations system to achieve success. Franchising offers a faster rate of expansion with a lower business risk. As a ‘BAM’ tool, franchising taps knowledge of the locals in the field, enabling them to earn a living by the labour of their hands. Some franchises could be easily replicated across the mission field, penetrating even small towns or large villages..."

We asked a panel of three experts with firsthand experience to give us their perspective on business as mission and franchising. We asked them 'What opportunities does a franchising approach present?', 'What are some of the challenges...?' and then 'How can we minimise the risks and get started?'

BAM in a Box? Accelerating the Impact of Business as Mission

by Mats Tunehag

Mats Tunehag shares this challenge, "Although the number of BAM businesses has been growing steadily, this growth has been relatively slow. There is still much more ‘BAM talk’ out there than BAMers taking up the challenge of starting and developing BAM companies. How do we bridge that gap? Are we missing something in BAM because we are assuming everybody can start from scratch? Is there an untapped pool of committed people who have ability but aren't going to start a business from nothing? Are we missing out because we don’t have a ‘BAM in a Box’ to offer? Could these people become good BAMers if there were franchising options?"

A Businessman's Journey

by JC

Recently I've been able to reflect on my life in the last 7 years since becoming a Christian, in particular, on my journey towards integrating faith and work, mission and business. Like many of my peers I struggled to reconcile my new found faith and my work, a struggle that was exacerbated all the more as I began to have a real sense of the Lord stirring my heart for mission. Based on the expressions of mission I was used to hearing about, I could only see this happening through training in pastoral ministry or church planting. Have you ever felt as a business person or professional that you’re about the only person in church who hasn’t got something to offer mission?  I certainly did.

It was during a mission conference that I first heard a speaker put the words business and mission together. Within weeks I had the chance to revisit SE Asia, this time in the role of the strategist, consultant and business professional I was graced to be.  I began to catch a vision for business as an expression of the Kingdom of God, a place where faith can be lived out in very real ways, where discipleship happens all week.

The Ideas We Inherit

by Jo Plummer

Stalin famously said ‘ideas are more powerful than guns’.  Ideas change our thinking and as our thinking changes, so does our behavior and our actions. Recently I have been looking back at times in history when business and mission have been connected. Although the term ‘business as mission’ is a fairly new one, there have been numerous points in the history of the Church where business strategy and mission strategy have been somehow integrated. This integration had much to do with how people were thinking at the time, reflecting both the ideas they had inherited and the mindset they were intentionally trying to pass on.

It has been said before that the current emphasis and growing activity in business as mission is part of a broader paradigm shift in the global church, a long, slow shift in thinking sometimes referred to as the ‘breaking down of the sacred-secular divide’. In practical terms, as we break down this divide in our thinking, we begin to integrate the whole of our life with our faith and values, we see our work and our business as a gift from God and as an arena for service to Him.

Servant Leadership in the Marketplace

by Peter Shaukat

Christians are called by God to bring servant leadership in the the marketplace.  There is critical need for servant leadership in the world today and this is especially true of the marketplace where so much of the world’s agenda and the pace for development is set. The marketplace can and should be a primary context for God’s redemptive action.

This need to bring servant leadership is not confined to those called to business as mission, however it is vital for BAMers to get to grips with our leadership role in the marketplace. Psalm 78 verse 72 describes the leadership of God's chosen servant leader David: ‘David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them’. Servant leaders must conduct themselves with integrity, and they must also be competent. This represents two spheres or opportunities for servant leadership in a business context: our moral leadership and our operational leadership.

Business as Mission: My hope for 2020

by Mats Tunehag

I hope very few people will talk about Business as Mission (BAM) in 2020. The term is like scaffolding: it is needed for a season as we build the real thing, businesses that glorify God and bring about holistic transformation of people and societies. The term BAM has its merits in clarification of the concept. The term has been helpful in the affirmation of business people and the mobilization of other resources. But the term is not important, the concept and the applications are.

Some people dislike the term or question its usefulness. That is fine with me. Other phrases are also used like business for transformation, Kingdom companies or business as integral calling. These kinds of discussions can be constructive as we pursue a better understanding of the theological, missiological and strategic underpinnings of the concept. But they can also cloud the issue and divert from the task at hand.

'We Call Upon Business People Globally': The BAM Manifesto Revisited

by Jo Plummer

When the Business as Mission Manifesto was drafted it was at the conclusion of a unique collaborative effort - an attempt to summarize the year-long work together of more than 70 Christian leaders and business as mission pioneers. It wasn’t so much that we were declaring ‘our manifesto’. Rather we were drafting a manifesto that we hoped could be embraced and adopted by the church worldwide, and Christian business people in particular. And it has served that purpose.

The Business as Mission Manifesto forms the final chapter of the landmark Lausanne Occasional Paper (LOP) on Business as Mission. In October 2010 it will be 6 years since the LOP was written and the next major Lausanne sponsored conference is coming up next month...  Is its message still fresh for us today?  I wanted to revisit the Manifesto to find out!

Training: Adding Value to the Entrepreneur

by Mark Plummer

Making a business work is incredibly satisfying and exciting.  Even when a business fails, a resilient entrepreneur gets up and goes at it again having learned from their first experience. Business is an incredible process where creativity, tenacity, risk and hard work can bring financial fruit and a broad impact.

I believe that preparation and training can be the difference between failure and success, and I am all about hedging towards success. This is particularly true for the entrepreneur starting a business in an emerging economy of the world where there is so much to learn and so much to consider.  I have seen firsthand the added value that training brings to the entrepreneur through the dynamic process of intensive training courses.

Entrepreneurs on Mission: Barriers to Break Through

by Mark Russell

There comes a day when we sit back and ask ourselves what we are going to do with our lives. In a sense, I am still asking myself that question. But many years ago I felt a nudge, a call if you will, to spend time in cross-cultural contexts advancing the gospel. At the time, I had no idea what that entailed. The only role models I had to look to were the missionaries I had met in Paraguay. They were either medical doctors or preachers. As a business student, it seemed I would have to leave behind my business interests and develop a new set of skills.  

A few years into my overseas ministry, I began to ask myself some new questions about why couldn’t one be a businessperson and a kingdom builder at the same time.   At the time I was working in a traditional missionary setting, but quickly found that a lot of people resonated with my search to integrate business and mission. Later, I realized that people all over the world were working independently to the same end. It seems God is up to something.

My Mission, My Business

Conversation with Doug Seebeck

There have been some great books published on business as mission in the last year – some great books giving foundations, biblical basis, step by step how-tos, model cases and much more… My Business, My Mission, also published last year, is a wonderful complement to these. Written by Doug Seebeck, Executive Director of Partners Worldwide and co-author Timothy Stoner, My Business, My Mission tells the stories of the cross-cultural partnerships nurtured through the work of Partners Worldwide…. These are stories of lives changed and poverty defeated through sustainable business. This is a book which looks full in the face of transformation through business and it is stirring stuff!

I had the privilege of chatting with Doug Seebeck about some of the themes that jump out of the book. These are themes that resonate in the wider marketplace ministry and business as mission movement and are significant for all of us:

The ongoing need for affirmation and mobilisation
My Business, My Mission tells the story of business people from all around the world, and yet over and over again there is a breakthrough moment. Doug Seebeck describes it this way “When business people ‘get it’ – that God wants them to be the way they are, to be these entrepreneurs, that God wired them to be the way they are and that they are exactly where he wants them to be... It’s like a celebration and they begin to live differently and they do their business differently”. 

Business as Mission: A Threefold Mandate

by Mats Tunehag

Business is more than making money, at least it should be. According to the “father of capitalism” Adam Smith, businesses exist to serve the general welfare.  
 
The computer pioneer Dave Packard said: ”Many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. People get together and exist as a company so that they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately - they make a contribution to society.”  ....

Interview with Neal Johnson

Author of "Business as Mission"

We talk with Neal Johnson about what motivated him to write his new book 'Business as Mission: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice' and asked him how he sees it contributing to the business as mission movement today.

Neal – you have done all sorts of things in your life, including banking, business, diplomacy and practicing law internationally and in the US, but now you are Dean of the School of Business at Bakke Graduate University  in Seattle – what motivates you?  

Clearly the thing that motivates me now and has for the past 20 years is my passion for Christ in the marketplace, especially business as mission.  Looking back on my earlier life, I would have given anything if  someone had taken me aside and said ‘Neal, have you heard about business as mission? Do you know you can do both business and mission—you don’t have to choose between them—that God is actually calling you to do both?’ ....